If a man has to say trust me, Gogu conveyed, it's a sure sign you cannot. Trust him, that is. Trust is a thing you know without words.

Hope is such a tenuous quality. To feel it and then to be denied what one most longs for ... Better, surely, not to hope at all, than to open the heart to a hope that is impossible.

I have listened to many tales in my life, and told a few of my own. If this has taught me anything, it is that there are some occurrences that change the course of things, that make an alteration far beyond their own apparent magnitude. It is like the throwing of a tiny pebble into a pool, how it makes an ever-expanding circle of ripples, spreading right across the water's surface.

The future was in our own hands. If we wanted a world where such things were possible, it was for us to make it.

I know it's hard for you to trust me. If I ever find the man who did this to you, who made you so frightened, I'll kill him with my bare hands. But you can trust me.

After a while, footsteps sounded on the flagstones outside and there was a gentle tap at the door. Of course, one of them would come. So close were we, the seven of us, that no childhood injury went unnoticed, no slight, real or imagined, went unaddressed, no hurt was endured without comfort.

How can he do this? If you were mine, I would fight to keep you. I would die, before I let you go.